In an earlier post last week, I talked about suffering from the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). A colleague of mine, The Doyen of Intellipedia – the US Intelligence Community’s classified wiki, Don Burke mentioned to me that he had read my blog, but it wasn’t FOMO he was suffering from, it was HOLI: The hatred of losing information.

I have to agree with him that HOLI is a subset of FOMO. While the fear of missing out is more encompassing to to what’s going on at work, on the television, the news, on twitter, out at a social meetup, it is the hatred of losing information is a big part of that. The knowledge gained when we participate on a collaborative site, watch the news, tweet on twitter, or meet in person is astounding.

The Doyen let me know he hates to see information disappear, information lost when there was an opportunity for it to be captured. I agree. That’s the very thing that Intellipedia is doing for the Intelligence community. The knowledge of government, contractors, and other qualified users dispersed around the world being shared on a wiki that anyone can contribute.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in wiki-markup and esoteric solutions for me. Many a night I enjoy working late as there is time for me to think and play with code. (I am sure many other code-geeks out there know what I am talking about). To me it is fun, fun to see a solution come to life that can effect massive change. Sometimes just 4 lines of code can make a big impact. Those are the time I really smile and get uber-geeky about my work. But then there are times the solution just doesn’t come, so I go to Starbucks or just have to call it a night and come back the next day or next week to it. We can’t expect to know the answer if we get too in the weeds.

Another colleague of mine who I was chatting with today online was commiserating with me about all the projects we juggle and body aches we suffer as we get older. His quote was “Our passions can easily be interpreted as Obsessions“. Even not having a significant other in my life, I know my family and friends can see this about me. My best friend asked me days in advance to go to karaoke last week, because he knew if I didn’t put it on my Google Calendar, then I would just stay in the office and work until I got hungry enough to come home.

Family matters – As you might have read from my tweets and my blog, I have been getting more involved with the church. Which connects me more with family. I feel good when I participate in church functions because my family has been with the church since before I was born and my pastor knows me not only by name, but what I do for a living and what I want to do with my career and life. I was even the first to volunteer for the Chili Cookoff we had this past Saturday and I did come in Second Place. (Dare I share my winning recipe with you all — nooooo like my votes, it will stay a secret).

Going to church and my mother coming down on the weekends gives me time to spend with my ailing grandmother and youngest brother. She’s been suffering from extremely low blood pressure among her other symptoms of her condition. She used to be able to outlift me when we would go grocery shopping. She’d grab the 50lb bag of dogfood because I have a bad back. Now its a good day when she can leave the house. Spending time with her I can see is good medicine, it lifts her spirits. Now that I could never do from my office.

My youngest brother and I have an age difference of 14yrs so much of his life growing up, I was not there. This is something I am working with him on as he has Aspergers and I learn his idiosyncracies. He doesn’t like chili or spaghetti, but he loves to cook and grill. He’s 18 and just graduated from High School, so he spent time living with me this fall and now he comes down on weekends. He is a big help around the house and I have been teaching him how to drive. I am proud to say he just did his first round-trip from Pennsylvania and back this weekend. He beat that new game on XBOX “Deadspace” in less than a day.

He’s not with me now in the house because I haven’t been able to spend much time at home as I juggle all my work responsibilities. I sat him down and told him he can come stay with me again in the future, but right now I can’t do much for him to help him get a job or education when I am not at home to help. He is scheduled to get his license soon and that should help out tremendously. Maybe then I could have a driver? I keep saying I need a personal assistant.

Anyways, back on point to this work-life balance, I know we all are trying to find it in our lives and what might work for others, does not work for all. With the openness of the web and new tools for collaboration and communication coming out every day it seems, we can’t know or share all the information. We will miss out and we will lose information. But now, we don’t have to be the only one who knows, goes, and shares. We can work together.

I hope reading my experiences let’s you know, we can’t be expected to do it all at 100%. I mean, even Barack Obama doesn’t do the dishes and Michelle Obama never slept at his DC townhome while he was a Senator. But they have identified and verbalized with each other what their priorities in life will be once they move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama is going to work on the Economy & hunt down Al-Qaida and Michelle is going to work on being Mom-in-Chief for the first year. (You can thank 60 Minutes for this knowledge tidbit)

My final thoughts are that time spending with loved ones is time always well spent. I think we should take a moment to remember that as the holidays come around.Be thankful for your health, your loved ones and for the passion that drives you.

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I know its late and there is the Skins vs. Cowboys game on, and yes True Blood and Dexter, but you can DVR all of that and talk shop with me. Tonight at 11pm EST, please join me live in a discussion where I will be a panelist.

For the twitter crowd who know what these @’s mean, you can follow along with the panelists in their streams and in the future.

Topics on Fire Podcast w/me (@immunity) @geechee_girl @leslieann44 @justinherman @casualrepartee @you2gov talking Gov 2.0 and social media and what it means for the Presidential Transition at 11PM EST. For the original scoop, you can read all the details over on Uptown Uncorked.

You can listen online and chat live with us adding your points as we “kick off the digital work week”, with our thoughts. This is great timing following President-Elect Barack Obama’s first post-election Interview that was on earlier tonight on 60 Minutes. I jotted down a few things he said and will probably try to bring up during our chat tonight.

And my apologies to our new Skins Corner DeAngelo Hall. My fat-fingered blackberry typing spelled your name wrong on an earlier “tweet” tonight.

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When a new employee joins our team or I speak to someone who asks to be mentored by me, I always mention right from the get-go, know your work-life balance. You may learn and absorb all the knowledge and best practices from me, but you really should find your work-life balance. In short, do as I say, not as I do.

I am writing this post as a comment back to Steve Radick’s blog in which he commented in how I mentioned part of my drive came from my having met and spoke to Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.

I suffer from the “fear of missing out” (FOMO). When I want to commit to everything, be logged in on twitter, write my blog posts on whatever network I happen to be on at the time, edit the wiki, be at social media events in DC, and so on…

It is very taxing on my physical well-being, as well as mental. In 2008 I can say this is my sickest on record. I have had more allergies, flu, colds, and just complete exhaustion than before. I am hoping I am learning to self-correct this as I have made corrective measures at home. So when I leave the office and walk in my door at home, I am not attached to my laptop.

Earlier this year I remodeled my den to turn it into an at home office. I do work from home from time to time and I wanted to have a more ergonomic place to go to without the interruptions of other things like the TV or front window. I got a nice wooden desk, lamp and place to stick all my magazines. I even got an ergonomic chair (better than I have at work), for home.

So now when I am working from home, I am working away from distraction and in comfort. When I am in my normal office, yes I do have TVs on (cable news), that is normally background noise as its not one of the many serial dramas I have come to be addicted. So when I am working at home, at least I am not contributing to my bad back or what I am sure will be carpel tunnel syndrome someday.

Also, having my office in another room is making it easier for me to just go to the couch or easy chair and just escape in front of the boob tube. Time usually only spent when I was sick. Now I can watch a couple shows as I decompress from home and then off to bed.

I still can’t pull away completely from twitter or work, but since switching from a HTC Dash phone to a Blackberry curve a few months ago, my ability to stay on top of emails at work has improved and twitterberry has been able to abait some of the FOMO of what is going on with twitter by at least letting me see who is @’ing me and what my friends and colleagues are talking about. Sometimes I see a good debate going on, which I would love to chime in… and I do… but I keep it to a short response when I am in my downtime now. I don’t let it get to the point of where I need to get up and walk into the office right away to get deeply engaged.

At least, that is what I am doing now to handle the balance. I am sure it will creep back more work-less play again. But I am trying. Now that its colder, its harder to get out and just drive the jeep with the top down to the beach. So maybe I will be more active on the Wii again. I love Wii tennis and Guitar Hero. I have also been persuaded to go to Karaoke on Wednesday nights. Will i see you there?

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I don’t know about everyone in the world, its not my job. But I do know there are people like me who travel frequently and sometimes they can’t bring their phone with them into their workspace or have to have it off during the day. That can be a pain when you are “expecting a call or important text”.

Fortunately technology is starting to catch up with the demands of the likes of us. We can participate in massive social messaging with sites like twitter, pownce, ping.fm, friendfeed and so on. And by using these services we can see our messages online. OK cool. Then there is something called Grand Central.

Grand Central is cool, as its in beta, I can choose my own phone number from anywhere in the country and use this as my “semi-anonymous phone number”. I use this in a few ways. Its the number in my email signature I give out via business email communications and eventually will be on my new business cards (along with my twitter name: immunity). But I can also use it to screen calls and forward calls to multiple lines at the same time. And where I can also check the voicemail online as it comes via email. Very nice huh?

But all that takes a little work to set up and disseminating those numbers and practices to your business contacts and tech savvy friends.

What happens if its your family and close friends, who might not be as techie as you. In fact, they are the ones that call YOU for IT support when their computer is b0rked.

This is where a service like Dashwire might come in handy. I recently stumbled upon the site, from a curious question posted by a fellow smartphone user on my twitter contacts. After reading some reviews on a zdnet blog and checking out the site, I decided to give it a trial run.

Dashwire essentially syncs up my smartphone (T-Mobile Dash) to a personal site for me so I can see all my calls, texts, pictures, and contacts. This is something T-mobile can do normally if I was using a sidekick, except for the text messaging. So this is why I like it. I can see the texts I am missing.

It’s able to make this work by sending text messages to the dashwire service, as a forward, so an unlimited text messaging plan is essential if you want to try this out. Additionally, be forewarned, this is a resource and battery drain, especially while synching. So while it maybe cool, consider this downside, especially if you are not able to charge your phone (charging in your car maybe a necessity).

Also to note, they didn’t have an exact match of the HTC phone for my dash, so I picked the closest model and it still works.

I started using this about 2 weeks ago and think I will give it at least one month more before I make my final call, but for this trial run (self-imposed trial, the service is free), its been very helpful.

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As much as I love and preach the rapid growing technologies that are making life and work easier and more effective in less time, the more I hate technology as well.

I am so addicted to all things mobile and how it connects me to the world. I can remember the shortcode for Twitter (40404), but I can’t remember my best friend’s phone number. In fact, I can’t remember anyone’s phone number post 2002, when my father finally bought my very own cell phone. I was late to the cell phone game as most of my friends had been using cell phones for a few years by then, but even 4 years out of the Army I was still clamming for a hard line. Now even my alarm system in wireless and I haven’t had a home phone in three years.

So since 2002 I have been becoming dumber. And I blame it on the cell phone. I mean think about it, before you owned a cell phone, you probably knew all your friends numbers that you called from your private line in your parents house and you could dial those numbers fast as lightening. But now, every time you lose your phone, reset it, or upgrade, you send a message out to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or whatever ever social network to ask for everyone to send you their numbers again. Even those whom you have weak ties.

Why bother remember 10 little digits when your SIM card can do it for you?

So what happens when we rely on that technology so much, it fails us in life? We can end up looking like real assholes.

This was the case for me back in April this year for instance. I was flying up to spend some time with my best friend in New Hampshire before heading to Boston to meet with Andrew McAfee, of HBS and to sit in on one of his classes. As the plane landed in Manchester Airport, I turned my T-mobile Dash HTC Excaliber smartphone back on so I could text him that I was on the ground. I was able to see that he had txt’d me he was waiting just as my phone froze. I restarted again and my phone started going into what I call the loop of death. This had happened once before so I knew my only recourse was to hard reset the phone. This meant 30 minutes of unavailability to do anything with it, even make a simple call.

So without a phone, I had no number to let him know I was there and I would be waiting for him. Luckily after 30 minutes and just as my phone was normalizing as I was sitting on a bench outside, he walks up, furious. Why didn’t call blah, blah, blah. He said a true friend would have the number written down elsewhere and couldn’t believe I didn’t have it memorize. To which, if I had, asked someone in the airport to borrow a cell phone for a local call or go to a pay phone.

This was not the first or the last time we had issues getting in touch because of not knowing each other’s numbers. I thought we had rectified this because we had exchanged business cards and (we are best friends mind you) that maybe by now we would have remembered or at least keep the numbers in our wallets.

Um no. It happened again. He lost his phone. His billfold is in storage where he thinks my business card might be. He had no access to get online (the Internet seems to be a novelty for laid back New Englanders) and thus excuses, excuses, blah, blah, blah.

OK so this is a long story to make a point. But as I sit here, many paragraphs later I can only remember the first three digits of his number (603). I still cannot muster up the remaining 7 with absolute certainty and it kills me. I mean I learned Arabic to fluency (which I have also mostly forgotten now), but I cannot remember 10 numbers.

My cell phone does all my day to day brain work for me, besides store numbers. It also emails me my daily calendar from google, I get my news, weather and traffic (see @thebeltway on twitter) via FriendFeed, twitter, and text messaging. I even read interesting feeds while getting iontophoresis during physical therapy in the mornings. I even email myself quick directions for meetings from google maps and in bad traffic on 95 I used Windows Live Search for finding alternate routes home.

Essentially its like my brain saying, try as I might, since some device that fits in the palm of my hand can remember all that information for me, why should I retain it in my head? I mean I don’t know how many times I have gone to t-mobile.com to look up the number of someone whom you would think I would have the number engraved on my knuckles.

Next up … getting my text messages online ? Say it ain’t so.

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Yesterday was an amazingly different and wondrous day. It started off with the hotel finding us the biggest chocolate croissants evar! Then Steve Mandzik and I walked down to E*Trade. After which, we started walking back to the Moscone West when we were stopped by News Channel 5 in SF to talk about the presidential campaign so far. I am hoping my soundbyte made it on air. (If someone can find me this clip I will love you forever and pimp your site, blog, twitter, whatever for you.)

Update: My friend Mike B. found the clip, I am standing next to Steve and his soundbyte made it, but mine did not. Next time eh?

After that, I sat in on Joseph Smarr from Plaxo’s presentation “Data Portability, Privacy, and the Emergence of the Social Web“. I saw Joseph earlier this year at the Future of Web Apps in MIami. This time he had more time to speak and talk about the direction in which the social web is going and the ever growing need for our connections to travel with us, instead of re-friending your friends. I also saw Kevin Marks again from Google and I met Identity Woman, Kaliya Hamlin.

I spent a lot of time back and forth in blogtropol.us and on the expo floor. I was really impressed with the Tell Me app that works with voice on your blackberry to keep your hands free when looking for information. I also got a demo of saleforce.com powered by google apps and the possibilities I can take with me back to Navstar. I still have 4/5ths of the floor to explore. A little each day.

Most of the time spent here is actually networking and talking to developers making cool hacks, scripts and apps. But the afternoon we got to listen to the Keynotes of Day 2 (Tim O’Reilly and Clay Shirky surely were the standouts).

So far the new apps I have been working with since I got here Fireball, powered by Fireeagle. Alertthingy, a desktop app for friendfeed.com. And ribbit, another way to make your phone do so much more for you.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMW52Z_a5xM]

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